Read Online Dark Place to Hide by A J Waines - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: A J Waines
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those kinds of words with Alexa. Nevertheless, it feels all wrong, but maybe I’m simply aggrieved that you chose to let Alexa know instead of me.
Before I get home, I stop at the village shop and ask Marvin if I can look at his CCTV footage from the camera outside his shop. He lets me watch from 7pm onwards on Wednesday evening. A handful of locals I recognise and several faces I don’t, cross in and out of the lens. I remember you were wearing grey jogging pants and a pink T-shirt and had your long dark hair clipped at the side like you usually do. I’d know immediately if you walked by. I watch all the footage until the digital clock at the bottom reads 20.05, when Marvin locked up and pulled down the shutters. The film is black and white and blurry, but I know that none of the individuals captured on it that evening are you.
It means you didn’t arrive. Did you ever intend to go? Did you have another plan already worked out? Are you with someone else? The father of the child? Have you turned to him instead of me?
Back at the cottage, I go straight to the kitchen and pour a glass of whisky. More bricks have fallen down the chimney in my absence and there’s a plateau of fresh dust on the hearth mat. There’s a damp tea towel squashed beside a cushion on the comfy chair. I notice newspapers, empty mugs, unopened post and unironed clothes littering the surfaces. The coffee table, sofa, mantelpiece and book shelves are disappearing under a surge of swelling detritus. When did it get so untidy? My mess has a life of its own, self-generating, breeding around me. I can’t bear it. It is going to take up all the space and squeeze me out.
I find your cardigan slung over the stool by the fireplace and press it to my face. It’s only two days since you left, but it feels far longer. I breathe in the dizzy smell of you. I love that perfume that is you, Dee; a heady cocktail of vanilla, fizzy sherbet and sex.
I can’t hold on any longer.
At this moment the truth hits me like a searchlight breaking open the dead of night in a prison camp. It pins me down and forces me to turn and confront it. I can’t escape it – I have to face the fact that the baby, our baby, wasn’t mine. I do the only thing I know how and retreat to my bolt-hole in the garden.
It’s hot and smells of disinfectant in here. The chickens left with the previous owners and only the remains of sawdust, grain caught in the cracks in the wood and the odd ginger feather indicate they were once here. My breathing sounds hollow and far away. It takes me back to that time when my father was still with us.
I was about seven and he was trying to teach me how to control a football. I was hopeless; unco-ordinated with more steps off balance than upright. Dad kept a rusty old welding mask in the shed, that used to belong to his father. He forced me into it, pulling the straps tight. He told me to keep my head up so I couldn’t look at my feet.
Feel the ball,
he shouted,
don’t look down
. The mask was unwieldy, making me top-heavy and I could hardly breathe. It sent me off balance even more and I tripped over the ball. I can still hear his sneering laughter as he watched me try to get up. He didn’t put out his hand to help me to my feet. He was full of scorn and left me there like a beetle on its back. My father was good at walking away.
I can hear him laughing at me now as I stomp around in the chicken coop. I don’t know where to put myself. I take a swipe at the wall with my fist. I punch and punch, carrying on until I make my knuckles bleed. If only I could suffocate his voice; there are barbs attached to eachword, biting into my skin with pronouncements that you’ve slept with another man, you were carrying another man’s child, you
cheated
on me. I don’t know how to face this. I certainly can’t accept it. It’s unbelievable. But, after the miscarriage, the tests said my DNA wasn’t there. It wasn’t our child. End of story.
I forget my
Before I get home, I stop at the village shop and ask Marvin if I can look at his CCTV footage from the camera outside his shop. He lets me watch from 7pm onwards on Wednesday evening. A handful of locals I recognise and several faces I don’t, cross in and out of the lens. I remember you were wearing grey jogging pants and a pink T-shirt and had your long dark hair clipped at the side like you usually do. I’d know immediately if you walked by. I watch all the footage until the digital clock at the bottom reads 20.05, when Marvin locked up and pulled down the shutters. The film is black and white and blurry, but I know that none of the individuals captured on it that evening are you.
It means you didn’t arrive. Did you ever intend to go? Did you have another plan already worked out? Are you with someone else? The father of the child? Have you turned to him instead of me?
Back at the cottage, I go straight to the kitchen and pour a glass of whisky. More bricks have fallen down the chimney in my absence and there’s a plateau of fresh dust on the hearth mat. There’s a damp tea towel squashed beside a cushion on the comfy chair. I notice newspapers, empty mugs, unopened post and unironed clothes littering the surfaces. The coffee table, sofa, mantelpiece and book shelves are disappearing under a surge of swelling detritus. When did it get so untidy? My mess has a life of its own, self-generating, breeding around me. I can’t bear it. It is going to take up all the space and squeeze me out.
I find your cardigan slung over the stool by the fireplace and press it to my face. It’s only two days since you left, but it feels far longer. I breathe in the dizzy smell of you. I love that perfume that is you, Dee; a heady cocktail of vanilla, fizzy sherbet and sex.
I can’t hold on any longer.
At this moment the truth hits me like a searchlight breaking open the dead of night in a prison camp. It pins me down and forces me to turn and confront it. I can’t escape it – I have to face the fact that the baby, our baby, wasn’t mine. I do the only thing I know how and retreat to my bolt-hole in the garden.
It’s hot and smells of disinfectant in here. The chickens left with the previous owners and only the remains of sawdust, grain caught in the cracks in the wood and the odd ginger feather indicate they were once here. My breathing sounds hollow and far away. It takes me back to that time when my father was still with us.
I was about seven and he was trying to teach me how to control a football. I was hopeless; unco-ordinated with more steps off balance than upright. Dad kept a rusty old welding mask in the shed, that used to belong to his father. He forced me into it, pulling the straps tight. He told me to keep my head up so I couldn’t look at my feet.
Feel the ball,
he shouted,
don’t look down
. The mask was unwieldy, making me top-heavy and I could hardly breathe. It sent me off balance even more and I tripped over the ball. I can still hear his sneering laughter as he watched me try to get up. He didn’t put out his hand to help me to my feet. He was full of scorn and left me there like a beetle on its back. My father was good at walking away.
I can hear him laughing at me now as I stomp around in the chicken coop. I don’t know where to put myself. I take a swipe at the wall with my fist. I punch and punch, carrying on until I make my knuckles bleed. If only I could suffocate his voice; there are barbs attached to eachword, biting into my skin with pronouncements that you’ve slept with another man, you were carrying another man’s child, you
cheated
on me. I don’t know how to face this. I certainly can’t accept it. It’s unbelievable. But, after the miscarriage, the tests said my DNA wasn’t there. It wasn’t our child. End of story.
I forget my